Re: Pinger INIT for Zip drives

[stever@gate.net (Steve Reeves)]

In article <33B064FA.4686@swbell.net>, Rubywand  <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:
>Edhel Iaur, Esq. writes ...
>> 
>> Could ya change the "sleep" delay to something really huge on a Mac or
>> PC, and then install the drive on an Apple //?  This may eliminate the
>> need for some people to have "ping" programs for their Zip's.

The maximum sleep delay time that these utilities allow is 60 minutes.

>     It does not seem very likely that Iomega would go to the extra bother 
>and cost of building-in non-volatile programmability when just saving user 
>preferences to hard disk in a config or .ini file will do the job.

This info has to be stored in the drive itself.  Otherwise each cartridge
would have different values.

>     Still, it would not be much trouble to try the idea. Unless someone 
>posts solid info one way or the other, I'll do a test and report what 
>happens.

I've been following this and other Zip/Jaz-related issues in the other
newsgroups.  Someone in comp.sys.amiga.hardware posted this excerpt
from the Iomega Jaz SCSI Driver Technical Information Manual:

                       "CAUTION

   Iomega stronly [sic] recommends the use of spin down timer
   values of 1-63 only.  Values in excess of 63 or the value
   of zero may cause loss of data and damage to the heads."

So apparently the Jaz (and probably the Zip also) wasn't designed to
continue spinning for extended periods of time.

Since the spin-down problem only seems to affect the Apple SCSI cards,
maybe a better alternative than a "Pinger Init" would be to increase the
timeout values in the driver, so that the drive has time to spin back
up before GS/OS gives up on it.

-- 
Steve Reeves
stever@gate.net